Brooms and Book Sales--Both Are Up!

In 2014, articles appearing in the Adventist News Network and Adventist Review Online entitled, "A Real-life Publishing Parable Found in a Broom Factory,"* promised a witty rationale for the decline in the Adventist publishing ministry. Let's see if it delivers...

The article reported the view expressed by former General Conference Treasurer, Robert Lemon, that publishing has drastically changed because of the digital age. Indeed, publishing has changed. But in what ways and how drastically?

Mr. Lemon stated that the dilemma in publishing is akin to the former broom factory at Columbia Union College, whose business was in decline after 50 years as a lucrative industry. The reason for the decline? Mr. Lemon recalls that a business man asked the question, "'Is there anywhere in your house where you still use a broom?'" 

The business man then argued there was no demand for brooms because everyone had wall to wall carpet in their homes. They should be making vacuum sweepers instead. Apparently, their homes must have been lavished with carpeted kitchens, bathrooms, and garages. This must have been the same era when barber shops, beauty salons, doctors' and dentists' exam rooms, nursing homes, hospitals, mechanic shops, grocery stores, cafeterias, gymnasiums, locker rooms, and airports were all lined with wall to wall carpeting. Witty. Indeed.

Let's return from the 60's to today. Has anyone heard of a little store called Walmart? Typing "broom" in the search window on their website yields 2,000 results, spanning 50 pages, of brooms and related products. The prices of brooms and dust pans seems to indicate they haven't been terribly devalued by the amount of carpeted homes we live in. Someone's still making money in the broom business.

Now back to the book conversation. Some people, Lemon included, see print material as being rendered virtually obsolete by eBooks. In another article, he's quoted as saying, "We believe there is a tremendous future for publishing, but not necessarily for printing." I have some philosophical (electronic books are easier to ban and burn than print) and prophetic reasons (Revelation 13 predicts religious persecution that will try to silence every voice of dissent) for maintaining printed material even as we embrace new technology. 

However, when decisions are being made numerically, rather than philosophically or prophetically, you have to bring the facts. Take a look at the following table and see my interpretation of the numbers below the table.

Here's a sales comparison of religious eBooks, paperbacks, and hardcover books for the year 2012 and the first half of 2013 (the period for which relevant numbers could be gathered to examine the validity of the 2014 parable). First of all note that these figures represent millions of dollars, which means that people are still reading. Secondly, notice that paperback sales tripled that of eBooks in 2012 and hard cover books quintupled eBook sales (that's right, hard cover yielded 5 times the revenue of eBooks). Thirdly, the trend was looking much the same in the first half of 2013. Keep in mind that numerous sources report that many people who buy electronic texts also have the print version. The evidence is clear: eBooks have not overtaken the publishing market anywhere near the panic-inducing levels that many critics would have you believe. 

*You'll have to look a little harder for that particular article, smh. . .